April 13, 2007 (Long Beach, Calif.) -- Hometown favorite Alan Sciuto
certainly raised the bar on his young team's performance on the
seaside Long Beach Grand Prix course during Friday practice and
qualifying.

As his team was formed just in time to answer the bell at last week's
Las Vegas Grand Prix, many might not have expected Sciuto to be at the
sharp end of the field in only his second race with his own team. He
quieted the skeptics, if not with a P2 performance during the morning
practice, than with a P3 performance during provisional qualifying.

As the Alan Sciuto Racing Swift .016 was obviously quite good during
morning practice, the team only implemented small changes for the
afternoon's qualifying session, opting to not disturb the car's
good balance. Provisional qualifying saw Sciuto battling for the front
positions with eventual polesitter Rafael Matos, second-placed Jonathan
Bomarito, Robert Wickens and James Hinchcliffe, a group which Sciuto
split down the middle as he eventually wound up third.

Although the times will drop tomorrow as the temporary circuit continues
to get faster as more rubber is laid down, the team is optimistic that
they will again be at the front at the end of Saturday's qualifying
session.

"After being second-quick in the morning, we decided to only make
small changes to the car before qualifying, and minor changes during the
qualifying session. Even though I think some of those changes may have
hurt us, I am still really happy with the result.

"The red flag that we had at the end of the session didn't hurt
us too much, but I ran up on some traffic at the end of the lap. The
splits showed that we were a tenth up on our best time and maybe we could
have had P2, but we couldn't have caught Matos today.

"Everybody I've talked to has been going crazy about how well
we've been doing. I've never done more interviews than I've
done this weekend, and it's a great feeling that my dad and I started
this team and we've gotten good results so fast. We've definitely
surprised a lot of people. Taking pole here would be the best thing
I've done in racing."